My dashboard tells me that up to now, I’ve written 99 posts (in this incarnation of SS), and the pressure of a round number bore down mightily, intimating that I had to come up with something good at this milestone. That, and other other down-bearing elements of my life, like papers, teaching, grading, etc. But recently, after finishing up a paper (on time!) I realized that I had to just jump back in with both feet if I’m ever going to use this site again. So here goes, with a comment on metafilter as a starting point, and because I’ve been thinking a lot about discourse anaphora recently:
His father, Nick Begich, won an election posthumously, only they didn’t know for sure that it was posthumous because his plane just disappeared. It still hasn’t turned up. It’s why locators are now required in all US planes.
Notice that there are three instances of “it” in the above. The first one, I think it’s clear, refers to the election winning event. But notice the second and third instances of “it” — the second refers to the lost airplane, which is to say it is the “it” that picks out a singular object in the world. But the third “it” refers to the event of the airplane being lost. I think this is fascinating because not only does it refer to a larger entity than what the previous “it” picks out, but it also refers to a proposition that isn’t the closest one, as it bypasses “it still hasn’t turned up,” which is closer, and instead is linked with the event of the airplane disappearing. If you’re confused, I made a little chart:
Resolving this kind of anaphora is something that humans do flawlessly, without thinking, all the time, but I bet it would be rather difficult to automate using a non-human.
3 Comments
I shudder to think what you made of Palin’s sentences. You betcha.
Anaphora? I think you mean enigma.
That sounded harsh. I meant, “I think you mean enigma?”